A Change in the Works
by The Unknown Thing
Summary: Mizuki is impatient, Naruto graduates early, the plot line is screwed up. Need I say more? Warning! Maito Gai shall be seen frequently, and GaiClone!Lee shall not be present.


A Change in the Works.

* * *

Main Summary: Mizuki tries to steal the Scroll of Seals one year earlier, which means that Naruto Graduates one year earlier. He is placed in team Gai. (Note: For this fic to work, the timing of the Kyuubi attack has been changed to nine years ago cause I want Naruto to be younger than his peers but the younger generation still do not know of the Kyuubi's true fate (Aka: seal) simply because they were evacuated. 

How the team placement works out: Ten Ten graduated but wasn't sorted into a team because she was apprenticed to Kohona's resident weapons specialist and would likely join another team when her one year training course ends. Neji, of course, was the Rookie of the year. Lee had trouble since he could not use Chakra but was able to keep an average score with his Taijutsu and written tests. Naruto was the Dead-last. In other words: Team Gai consists of Neji, Lee and Naruto, whilst Team Seven has Sasuke, Sakura and Ten Ten.

Ages: Neji: 12, Lee: 12, Naruto: 9, Sasuke: 11, Sakura: 11, Ten Ten: 12. Team 6: 11. Team 8: 11.

Set two weeks before the Gennin exams.

"Speach" _'Thought'_

Unknown: Hiya! I do not own Naruto or anything else. Please R&R so I know if I'm doing ok.

* * *

Chapter 1: The Gennin hopefuls.

* * *

----Somewhere outside Kohona---- 

"Arrghh! This is too damn hard!"

The frustrated cry of a certain blond prankster broke through the silence of the early morning, startling awake many of the forests inhabitants and scaring the shit out of one sleepy old man who had sat up watching him all night through his magical-crystal-ball-thingy.

At the moment, the annnoyed blond was sitting on his rear, trying to figure out why-the-heck he couldn't produce a single good Bunshin. Everyone else in his class (minus one boy who had a condition that meant he could only produce the bare minimum amount of Chakra) could make at least _three_.

And to top it off: the Bunshin no Jutsu was the requirement for the annual Gennin exam that he needed to pass to become a Ninja. Life was so unfair.

"Naruto-kun? What are you doing out here?"

Ah, yes: Rock Lee. The boy whose body could only produce a certain amount Chakra. He liked Taijutsu, girls with pink hair, taking notes and he had the habit of working himself into the ground every time he went out training. He also had the HUGEST eyebrows known to man and the lifelong ambition of pounding the face of the resident No.1 Rookie, Hyuuga Neji, into the dirt. Quite admiral.

"Fuzzy-brows? I should be asking you the same thing."

He looked at the other boy closely: Lee was panting heavily, a sign that he had been training, and his knuckles were bleeding through the bandages he had placed on them, another sign that he had been training vigourously.

"Do you _ever_ take a day off?" He blurted out.

Lee smiled as he took in his loud class-mates unkempt appearance: his usual white T-shirt (he hadn't taken to wearing orange just yet, face it: you know you hate that thing) was rumpled and dirty, as were his dark blue shorts that sported holes in them. He could also see that the young Ninja-in-training's sandals were close to falling apart.

"I should be asking you the same thing."

Naruto smirked and they both laughed. "I guess your right. Hey wanna head over to the academy together?"

"Yosh! Let's go!"

----At the Academy, during Lunch----

Naruto and Lee were on the roof of the Academy. Lee sat with a home-made boxed lunch, while Naruto had some fruit and Ongiri (rice-ball) that he got from the cafeteria.

Half-way through his lunch Lee paused "Naruto-kun?"

The nine year old looked up from his apple. "Yeah?"

"Today during class, you seemed to have trouble with your Bunshin. Why is that?"

"Oh that? I dunno. I've never really been that good with Bunshin. I always ended up making a mess of it. My Bunshin always looked pale and like they were sick or something. And then they'd disappear. Iruka-sensei says that I'm putting too much Chakra into it and that I should only use a little. The thing is I can't just use a little of it, it's always a lot. I can't figure it out..."

Blinking, the whiskered boy looked over at Lee who was staring intently down at his lunch. "Um…Lee? Is something wrong?"

The dark haired boy shook his head, looking up from his boxed meal. "I was just thinking…" he began.

"'Bout what?" The blond child prompted.

"…that maybe we could get Neji to take a look. Apparently, with those white eyes of his he can see people's Chakra. If we could convince him to look then maybe we can figure out if there's anything wrong that's giving you a hard time with controlling your Chakra."

A large fox-grin broke out on Naruto's face. "That's a great idea Lee! Let's go see if we could ask him now bef-"

The Academy lunch hour chose that time to end: BRRIINNGGGGGGG!

"Or we could just go to class now!"

* * *

Neji sat at his desk in silence while he waited for the rest of the class to arrive in order for the lesson to start. Briefly his mind wandered to how he would be able get back at the Main House for the death of his father. Maybe he could mess with Hinata…Crash! 

He was suddenly jolted out of his rather dark thoughts by a commotion at the front of the class.

He saw two boys: the first one was rather short, with blond hair that spiked out in all directions and blue eyes, the second was taller. He had dark hair with matching eyes, weird eyebrows (did they just move?!) and the back part of his hair was tied back. They were Uzumaki Naruto and Rock Lee, A.k.a the Class Clowns.

The two boys, it seemed, had gotten stuck in the doorway trying to out run Neji's fan-girls, and now said fan-girls were attempting to-unsuccessfully I might add-push their way into the class room. Needless to say they were only making the situation worse.

It was with a loud cry that Neji's unlucky class mates were suddenly pushed through the door and then finally trampled upon as the fan-girls (Neji called them Harpy's) rushed for the empty seats next to the Hyuuga prodigy.

It was after the Harpy's had settled that Neji noticed the two boys from before looking over at him from the other side of the classroom. The rather effemnate boy prayed to all that was holy that they weren't fan-boys, one was enough thank-you-very-much. (He shot a quick glance at Miciru's empty seat, he was still in hospital then...)

Glaring over at them he was momentarly pleased when the two pests quickly averted their gaze, only to be dissapointed when they started sneacking glances at him and whispering to each other.

As the lession progressed, Neji got more and more worried as his two classmates continued to stare over at him from time to time.

Eventually (thankfully, in Neji's opinion) the final bell rang, however much to Neji's annoyance his two pesky classmates followed him closely.

Angry, after trying and failing to lose them in the rush of students leaving the Academy, Neji decided that his best bet was to confront them and get it over with quickly.

After all, he could alwayas just Jyuuken them if they _were_ Fan-boys.

Decided, the Hyuuga prodigy made his way towards his favourite training area with haste, internally smirking when they followed him using their pathetic stealth (He completely forgot that he was using the Byakugan to watch them).

Eventually they reached Training Area 0.

Neji not wanting to wait quietly for them to make their move, began training so he didn't loose too much time out of this.

He sincerely hoped they would hurry so he could get this over with.

It seemed though, that the two dolts hadn't throught this far ahead, since neither of them tried to confront him. They just sat there, whispering to each other.

For the love of..!

"Alright you two, get out here." Nothing.

He narrowed his eyes. "Now."

With a squeak a mop of blonde hair popped out of the nearest bush, followed closely by a taller dark haired boy.

* * *

"Eh heh heh..." 

_'Oh we are sooo dead.'_

Those were the thoughts that ran through both boys minds at that prescice moment.

But seriously though, they were dead. Dead! D-E-A-D!

"Well..." Lee began.

"We...eh. Well we wanted to, umm, ask you something and we'd really appreciate it if you'd hear us out."

"...Very well..."

"It's like this..."

* * *

Neji watched with his Byakugan activated as Naruto tried once again, in vain, to create a Bunshin that wasn't deformed. Although he was impassive on the outside, on the inside he was gaping like a fish. He didn't think that this kind of problem was possible for someone at the age of twelve. 

"It's too much Chakra." He stated plainly, only a slight amount of awe creeping into his voice.

Lee looked at him, thinking that while Hyuuga prodigy had his all-seeing white-eyes, his ears were pretty useless when it came to listening.

He tried to explain again. "We know that he's using too much Chakra, what we don't know is why he can't use a small amount."

In response, Neji glared at him with the Byakugan still active (which wasn't a very pleasant experience, let me tell you) and like wise tried again to get Lee to understand what _he_ was saying.

"That's not the problem. The problem is _too much_ Chakra."

"Huh?" He sighed.

"Naruto-kun has so much Chakra that it's near impossible for him to control it properly. On average, at our age we have a relatively small Chakra capacity. This makes it easier to learn to use it in small amounts. Naruto-kun, however, has a Chakra capacity that's, if I am not mistaken, very near Jounin level, which means that it'll be very hard, if not impossible for him to learn how to completely control it."

Lee's eyes were so wide that they threatened to fall out. "…Wow…poor Naruto-kun. If it's this bad now I'd hate to see what it would be like when he reaches our age…" Neji's head whipped around so fast that he actually heard it crack.

"When he reaches…our…age? Just what do you mean by our age?"

His face looked so dangerous Lee was actually scared…there was this frighteningly dark aura hanging around Neji…and was that lightning flashing?

"Well?" the white-eyed boy asked (demanded) impatiently.

"Well what?" For some reason (which Lee is eternally thankful for) Naruto chose that time to pop up.

"Ah…Naruto-kun, Neji-kun wants to know how old you are."

The blond looked surprised.

"Eh? You could have just asked me instead of scaring Lee-nii! Well, I'm nine years old. Almost ten."

Silence.

"Uh…Neji-kun? Hello! Earth to Neji-kun, come in Neji-kun! Are you there? Hey!"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"D'you think he's dead?"

"No, he's still breathing."

And behold the great Hyuuga Neji has fainted while sitting upright.

And when the opportunity presents it's self…

"Let's doodle on his face."

Take it with a pinch of mischief.

"Naruto-kun I don't think that's such a good idea!"

"Relax, what could hap-" "What are you-!!! KAITEN!"

"OOOOOOOoooooooowwwwwwwwwiiiiiieeeeeee!"

* * *

Ayame was worried. 

No it wasn't about anything financial or potentially life threatning. Rather it was the fact that Ichiraku's no.1 customer hadn't shown up yet. Naruto was rarely this late, usually it was an hour or something after the academy ended that he showed up after getting out of detention that he never completed. He'd end up running in, eat five bowls of ramen and either run straight back out again or get hauled out by one very annoyed (and occasionally pink) Iruka.

But now...It had been over three hours, it was starting to get dark...where could he be?

What if he'd been hurt? Was he sick? What was-

Omgwtf!?

W-was that THE N-neji Hyuuga covered in orange and green doodles?

It was! And he was with Naruto and some other boy that she assumed was the Lee-kun that Naruto told her about.

They were all covered in doodles.

Neon pink, orange and green doodles.

* * *

"Hey Ayame-nee-chan!" The blond hyperactive Ninja-to-be stood up on the balls of his feet and started waving like mad, almost smacking his companions in the face. Of course he didn't realise this, he was to busy waving at his nee-chan. 

"Naruto-kun where hve you been I was worried about you, I thought some thing was wrong when you didn't show up at your usual time."

Scratching the back of his head he smiled sheepishly while apologising.

"Gomen Ayame-chan, I was with Lee-nii and Neji-kun, I hadn't really planned on taking so long it just came up."

Lowering his arm back to his side, he used his puppy-eyes, hoping she would-

"Forgive me? Please?"

"Oh, I don't know, you made her pretty worried." A deep but kind voice sounded from within the Ramen stand

"Dad!" "Teuchi-sama!"(1)

The kind face of the Ramen Stand owner peeked out from within the back room of the restraurant.

"Oh? What's this then?" He stared at the multiude of scribbles that covered the three boys fom head to toe and fought not to laugh at one particular one on the Hyuuga that said: 'Don't hate me because I'm pretty.' He snickered anyway as Naruto caught him staring and gave a proud grin of accomplishment, unaware of the one on his forehead that said: 'Space for Rent.' The boy with the bushy brows had two messages on his face: 'Say hello to my little friends.' was written with arrows pointing to his eyebrows while 'Are you ready to Rock?' was written on his cheek.

He gave up trying to hold in his laughter and almost collapsed.

Eventually he was able to calm down enough and take their orders.

The boys sat and ate their meal in silence, each one thinking over their day and finding that this was one of the funnest days of their lives. Almost simultaneously they looked at each other.

Suddenly Neji spoke up: "Need any more help tomorrow?"

"Uh huh." They nodded.

"Hey can I get one more Miso please?"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"So who's paying?"

* * *

End Notes: 

(1) "Teuchi-sama!" Sama is word used to show utmost resect to some one, like a king or a lord. I Naruto's case, it is because the man makes his beloved Ramen. Also I'm not sure if Teuchi is his name but I called him that anyway.

Unknown: Yahoo! It's done! Now I know your all wondering 'WTF happened to your other fics?' Rest assurred they are on their way. And thankies to all my lovely reveiwers.

Thing: Unknown has other fics comming out, mainly because she has too many ideas. She's planning a fic of epic proportions named 'Ninpo: School of the Gifted' and she hopes that you will enjoy it when it comes out. She's trying to get the feel back for 'Can I Bite You?' because she's aiming for a serious strory with that one. There will be humour, but it wont be Crack (hopefully).

Any-hoo! R&R!!


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